Nativity
by ffvogt
Summary: College AU. Popular, easygoing Lawrence Daley of the athletic team finds himself getting paired up for an upcoming project with the enigmatic, privileged new student Ahkmenrah Hasani. The strange pair have to find a way to connect. Chapter 2 is up. Completed.
1. Nativity

9

 **Nativity**

Rating: T

Summary:

College AU. Popular, easygoing Lawrence Daley of the athletic team finds himself getting paired up for an upcoming project with the enigmatic, privileged new student Ahkmenrah Hasani. The strange pair have to find a way to connect with each other and build a friendship.

Disclaimer: Night at the Museum and its characters are courtesy of their rightful owners.

* * *

 **Nativity**

The new student entered the classroom with a grace unsual for most. When he presented himself, he looked at everyone with an affective gaze which intensity sprung out of a mixture of melancholy and disdain. And that was also the manner in which he pronounced his name, _Ahkmenrah Hasani_. His accent was at once strange and exquisite, melodic and imposing. Needless to say, most of the students were baffled: some boys at the bottom of the class blurted out stiffled chuckles at his _preciousness_ , but no one except Mrs. Alderson, the professor, had thought that the accent seemed to come from a far-off, fictional land. The girls, on the other hand, were too enchanted by his beauty that none actually cared about his accent nor his _preciousness_ , in the same way they failed to notice his interesting gaze because they were too amazed by the beauty of his olive skin, tousled dark hair, and large brown eyes.

"Isn't that a Gucci leather jacket?" one of the girls asked her friend. The other one nodded.

Then, in the same way he entered the classroom, the new student took a seat, extracted his notebook, pencil case, and glasses case from his genuine-leather messenger bag, took the Tag Heuer glasses out of it, put them on. A while later he was as calm as if he had always belonged there, listening to Mrs. Alderson's explanations on More's _Utopia_ with his torso lightly perched forward.

A few while later, the new student was the only person who pointed out that the textual allusion to Terentius actually establishes a parallel between Hythloday and Erasmus' Folly. Mrs. Alderson was very impressed with the statement that she actually talked to the new student after class.

Anyhow, even after months, little was known of Ahkmenrah Hasani. He did not talk much, leave alone bluff, and he rarely showed up in social events. He had no friend that they knew of, not because he was a distasteful person, but because somehow people always saw him as intimidating. Sure, his smile and gestures were cordial, elegant, but at the same time they were distant, detached. He was often seen at the corner of the library, poring over a book whose title they never knew of, except the librarians. Until then, what remained of him were rumors and conjectures, none of which was ever clarified.

* * *

One day, a group project brought him together with a certain Lawrence Daley. When the name of his partner was pronounced, the latter had fallen silent all of a sudden, as his friend chuckled in the background. He had thought, what in the fucking hell is this, and had even asked Mr. Michaels whether it would be possible to replace his partner.

"Why, Larry? You should be thankful. Mr. Hasani is a very sharp, diligent student. I am sure he will influence you in a good way."

Except he did not know Mr. Hasani.

He never even talked to him.

…and would probably get a permanent ego damage from working with him.

Larry shuddered with terror.

"He is a very nice person, too."

Yep, surely he is. Larry nodded ironically, left the classroom with a lopsided smile.

He shook it off, then went straight to the library to meet Mr. Hasani—Ahkmenrah. That's the new guy's name, isn't it? _Ahkmenrah._

* * *

As always, Ahkmenrah was in his corner, sitting calmly, poring over a book with dog-eared and yellowed pages, nodding lightly from time to time to the music playing through his earphones. Larry had stared at him for a while, _this little prince_ , he laughed in his heart as he stared at _the new guy_ , because for Larry he would always be that: the new guy. He said hi. The other one did not hear. He tapped lightly on Ahkmenrah's shoulder. Then there was a respond: Ahkmenrah took off his earphones then turned to look at Larry, with his usual cordial, distant smile.

"Daley."

"Yep."

Larry pulled a chair next to Ahkmenrah, sat down, said:

"Just so you know, man, I had asked Mr. Michaels to… be replaced," Ahkmenrah frowned. _Shit_ , Larry thought, preparing his words, _he does have the gaze of a serial killer_ , "you know, just in case you'd rather work with someone smarter. No sarcasm intended. I mean…"

"I don't get it, Larry—can I call you Larry?" replied Ahkmenrah, still with a frown, "I would be happy to work with you, or anyone else, it's not like I judge people or anything," he pushed the book in front of him away with the side of his right hand. Larry took a quick glance of it then realized that the text was in Latin, "listen, would you let me arrange my things, then we can go grab some coffee, alright?"

Larry nodded. In fact, he did not actually wanted to, but something about Ahkmenrah just made him nod.

"You're reading Latin?"

"Yes, but it's nothing special, really…" Ahkmenrah said calmly, slightly uneasy, shoving the book into his bag.

"What's it about?"

"Dracontius."

"Who's that?"

"A fifth-century poet from Carthage."

"Okay."

Larry watched Ahkmenrah sorted out his things. Everything was done in an orderly, almost mechanical, and highly efficent manner. He then got up, closed the bag, shouldered it, pushed the chair discreetly towards the table. The precision of his movements was almost unsettling.

He gave a slight nod when he passed the librarian. Larry did the same, awkwardly. Come to think of it, it was probably his first time at the library… no, his second. But who gives a damn?

"So, nice to meet you, Larry."

"Really, man, you don't have to work with me if you don't want to," Larry said groggily. Outside the athletic club, he was practically… nonexistent, "I will mess things up."

"There's a nice café nearby—my treat," Ahkmenrah replied, as if he had heard nothing said by Larry a while ago, "we can start gathering ideas, constructing a nice line of argument. Sounds good?"

And it felt like years, for Larry, since he last said "line of argument".

* * *

What Ahkmenrah said "café"was an upscale bistro with the most expensive cup of coffee he ever ordered and the best strüdel he ever tasted his entire life. They were sat in a corner by the window, overlooking the streets filled with ants below, Larry sitting uneasily on the velvet chair as if its entire surface was covered in spikes, Ahkmenrah was as calm as he could be, scanning the pages of his notebook, following each lines intensely, as if decoding an ancient writing.

From time to time, he suggested a line of argument (Larry still felt strange saying it), the new one always sharper than the one before, and all Larry could say were praises. Right now, he felt so far from his friends, the diner where they always spent Saturday evenings, the Greek restaurant at the corner of the street where he "splurged". He felt so far from the bustles and the buildings that he used to see from down below, among the ants. All of a sudden he thought of a film he had seen as a child, his father's favorite, about a futuristic society in which the riches, like Ahkmenrah, are always above, bathed in sunlight, while the rest are stuck underground with the rustling sounds of machines and whatnot, and sometimes they are even sacrificed to a strange god (*1).

"You okay?" Ahkmenrah asked. And still he had that cordial, distant smile. Maybe a constant exposure to sunlight make people like him act that way. The height could be suffocating… Nonetheless, it looked like nothing that he, Larry, could understand. In his confusion, he blinked. Ahkmenrah closed the notebook, took off his glasses, said to Larry:

"Hey, let's take a break. Nothing goes into my head anymore."

* * *

Since then, Larry's opinion on Ahkmenrah changed. It was more neutral, so to say, that every time his friends mocked Ahkmenrah, he would hush them off by saying "he's nice, you know. Very withdrawn, but nice." And they mocked Larry for being gay. He laughed it off. Besides, what was the difference, really, between lusting over a woman and a man? If any, are we not always a bit fascinated by both? He smiled to himself, facing his newly-shaved face in the bathroom. _There you are, man, start sounding like the new guy_.

"Can I ask you something, man?" he asked Ahkmenrah one day.

"Yes," he replied, taking his gaze off the book, turning it over on the table, on the pages where he was reading.

"I don't want you to think of me as a racist or something, but you have the strangest accent."

Ahkmenrah smiled (yes, his usual smile: cordial yet distant).

"You're not the first person to tell me that."

Larry smiled in relieve.

"Where do you come from?—No, really man, I don't mean anything bad—just curiosity, really."

"I know, Larry.

I was born in Cairo, but spent most of my childhood in Sofia (and where is it, Larry wondered), then we moved to St. Petersburg, it wasn't long. Then Paris. Then here I am."

"Sounds like some kind of an adventure novel."

"Yeah, my father is a professor of Diachronical Linguistics of Latin Languages (and what the hell is that, Larry wondered), so we have to move quite a lot, of course according to the best offer from universities, since there are not many like him."

Larry had no idea which amazed him more: the amount of information that he had to grasp, or the fact that Ahkmenrah had said everything the way one would say "it will rain today" or "there'll be sun later in the afternoon".

"Uh...okay."

A while later:

"Do you like it here?"

"I'm getting used to." (Which was a short way to say that he won't be long here.)

* * *

They had finally found a nice line of argument. Surprisingly, Larry had contributed more than he had himself expected to. Ahkmenrah had even complimented him of being "intelligent", but it was spoken in his usual cordial, distant manner that Larry actually wondered if his working partner was just being nice.

In fact, what not to suspect behind such niceness? The entire being of Ahkmenrah, Larry thought, was like a screen behind which something is hidden. Just like his apartment, large, sophisticated, and very neat, but distant, like the owner, as if the slightest sign of life was ironed flat, the way a wrinkle on a shirt was straightened. The only time he was convinced that the apartment was actually occupied by real people was the moment where Ahkmenrah played the piano for him. Only then he was actually convinced that the apartment was not not some kind of decoy whose only purpose is to appear in lifestyle magazines.

"Wow, you play it well," Larry blurted out spontaneously.

To which Ahkmenrah, as always, had replied with no allusion to the pleasure from the compliment. And Larry wondered if such thing called "compliment" actually existed for that guy.

"It's Thalberg."

"Who's that?"

"Sigismond Thalberg," he added, "a rival of Franz Liszt."

"I don't know them."

"It's okay. Most never heard of Thalberg anyway," and, as always, Ahkmenrah had said it as if it was something normal, and that Larry was not inferior nor stupid for not knowing it.

"And the other guy?"

"He was pretty much the Bowie of the Romantics."

"It was beautiful, though," Larry said a while later, "it's not like I understand the classics, though."

" _Isn't it?"_

Ahkmenrah smiled. For the first time, Larry had noticed a humanly glow in his eyes, as if a part of the veil had been lifted. There you go, man, he thought, you're a real, living human being, and today I'm convinced. You've always been cold and distant and such, but today I know I'm not talking to some mummy or an imaginary friend. Which is good to know.

"It's from the first movement of his piano concerto opus five."

"Whoa, whoa... wait."

Ahkmenrah returned to the piano then played another part, the coda of the third movement, gracious, serpentine, pristine, as if a ceiling of glass had just shattered, the dust hitting Larry's ears like a constellation of sound atoms. Larry did not know where to pay attention, Ahkmenrah's fingers on the keyboard, the constellation in his ears, or the weirdness of it all. The music was indeed beautiful. Too bad it was the only adjective he could think of (Ahkmenrah could probably come out with hundreds of other ones, more appropriate than "beautiful"). In the confusion, Larry watched the fingers on the piano, wondering how someone could actually do that. There was something almost ecstatic in the way Ahkmenrah played it, the way he nodded his head subtly during accentuated passages, as if he was entirely detached from the mundane reality, the everyday reality, the reality in which he, Lawrence Daley, lived. And to think there's maybe another world to it, _in_ it!

"This passage is particularly interesting because of the… contagion," Ahkmenrah said during a pause, "the overlapping of minor and major tonalities, like two different memories overlapping together, before eventually reuniting in pride and despair."

Larry did not understand anything Ahkmenrah said. Nor did the latter intended to speak to Larry, or to himself. What would his friends think were they to find out that, instead of going to their Friday night meet-up, Larry was in Ahkmenrah's apartment, listening to—what's his name again— _Sigmund something-berg_. And he was thinking, as of during that the moment that the piano solo part continued playing, a chain of what to Larry seemed like detached notes eventually augmenting in loudness, that the vision through which we decide to see, to decide, was decidedly too narrow. Like how mocking some guys from the marching band seemed very interesting when seen by him and his friends, but to the same thing, Ahkmenrah may have a different view.

"What do you think?" Ahkmenrah asked when he finished the last chord.

"Eh, what?" Larry said absentmindedly, then quickly snapped back, "it's amazing. Unusual, but amazing, really…" A while later: "Hey, what do you think…"

"What do I think of… what?"

"You know," for the first time Larry decided to confront Ahkmenrah's gaze. For the first time, he stopped over-scrutinizing that slight frown, deep gaze—that as of now he was sure were the other guy's signature—and talked to him like a normal human being—of two different realities, of course, but two human beings nonetheless, "when people like me mock the ones in the marching band, or… the one like you."

For a while, Ahkmenrah was silent. But his gaze was reflecting some sort of… human warmth. Like a normal person's gaze. He lifted his hands from the keyboard then closed the lid of the piano.

"It's alright," Ahkmenrah finally responded, and it shocked Larry, "if that what you and your friends believe in, it's your reality, why not. But in the other side, me and the people of marching band would stand our lines, doing what we believe in," he smiled, "people think that something we called reality is singular, a straight flat line, but in fact it is a river. Maybe we're floating at the surface, maybe we're sunken underneath, torn away by the passing currents, maybe we're in the currents, moving to it, disappearing. So... it's alright. You and I have equal rights to perceive and live in a particular part of the river to our choice. Like languages, you know, or music. You can be a melodic legato, a chain of fragmented staccati… what matters is that we need every one of them, every layer. Because whatever is singular, is dead."

It was at that moment that Ahkmenrah's eyes looked _human_. Really human. Maybe because Larry had finally understood his reality, maybe because the veil was finally lifted. Either way, Larry smiled, said:

"We're going to impress the whole class tomorrow, you know."

Ahkmenrah replied with a smile. A warm, human smile.

The main door of the apartment opened. A very elegant middle-aged man walked in, clad in a Burberry coat, holding a suitcase and in the other hand, an umbrella. He placed the umbrella at the stand by the door, removed his hat, his scarf, then placed them on the hanger. He scanned the apartment, finding his son at the piano, as always—and he knew that he had done revising his Latin.

"You must be Lawrence," he said to Larry with a cordial, distant smile—what was Ahkmenrah's smile, "what a pleasure to welcome you here."

* * *

At the end of the presentation, Mr. Michaels looked at Larry with some kind of contentment in his eyes. _Just as I thought, Lawrence, he's a good influence for you._ At the end of the presentation, Larry exchanged a look, a smile with Ahkmenrah, what seemed to be the last one for after that they kind of returning to their natural courses: Larry with his friends, Ahkmenrah at the library, at the piano…

Sometimes, when they happened to pass by each other at the corridor, in front of the classroom, during pauses, they would exchange a look, a smile. Sometimes it happened that Larry thought of the smile Ahkmenrah had given him when he said _"isn't it?"_ about the passage of the… _what's the composer's name again_? Of a friendly gesture, a kindness, always cordial, disillusioned… that flat manner in which he said things. Sometimes, the remembrance struck him like matches struck unexpectedly in the dark (*2). It was a hope of friendship fading too soon, a fading peak of a tower seen in an extreme upward angle, the way he would sometimes look up to see the upscale bistro where they had first discussed the "line of argument" (no, really, Larry thought, it still sounded strange spoken by him).

After some time, Ahkmenrah retreated back behind the white screen, the way he was always for everyone else, and for him, the prince whom they always addressed by "Hasani", because saying his first name never quite felt appropriate to everyone, the way you feel when you have to address your friend's parents by their first names the first time. And Larry, like the others, mentioned him as "Hasani". Before long, the exchange of look and smile stopped altogether. Both, from two different corners in the classroom, would observe each other from time to time, but nothing else followed afterwards.

One evening in September, upon walking the Times Square, passing by a music store, he heard something familiar. He stopped before the door for a while, trying to dig out the sediments from his memory. He asked the clerk, to which the old man responded after having thrown him an accusatory look:

"Sigismond Thalberg."

 _Thalberg_. Yes, that's his name. Larry forced it into his memory, pronouncing it one more time: _Thalberg_. He even bought some CDs of Thalberg, the concerto and _Les soirées de Pausilippe_. Anyhow, he had no idea why he did that: maybe he would come to see Hasani tomorrow after class, at the library, then ask him about Thalberg. Or the Carthaginian poet…

He eventually did. But to his surprise, Ahkmenrah was nowhere to be found. Maybe, for once, Ahkmenrah finally decided to take a break. He pictured his former working partner in his apartment, facing the piano, playing Thalberg. But the following day, the following week, Ahkmenrah was still nowhere to be found, neither in the library nor in the classroom. The first day of the following month, he asked the librarian.

"Haven't you heard? Mr. Hasani moved recently."

"Where?"

"I have no idea, really. But then, with someone like Mr. Hasani's father, it must be big deal," his eyes wandered, "think of Sorbonne and Humboldt and God knows what others. Some people really are that blessed, don't you think, Larry?"

"I guess..." he said after some time.

Somehow, the librarian began mourning his fate. He had studied hard back then when he was in France, he said. The best of his class. He always got the _bourse_ because he was that good. He graduated Master with a 19 on his mémoir, and got the agrégation at the first attempt. But a twist of fate required him to go back to America and resumed his career as a "poor-ass librarian". He went on and on, his voice struck Larry stifled, monotonous, like waves in the distance.

"But maybe he just wants a place to call home."

"What?"

"Ahkmenrah just wants a place to call home."

Having said that, he thought of Ahkmenrah's friendly gesture, his kindness which was always cordial, disillusioned… The remembrance struck him like matches struck unexpectedly in the dark, a sudden irruption of human warmth.

Notes

(*1) reference to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Ahkmenrah's character here is comparable to Freder Fredersen who "transgresses" the upper world to reach the other side.

(*2) a direct quotation from Woolf's To The Lighthouse (1927). The fragments of memories that Larry has of Ahkmenrah are directly compared to an epiphany.

 _ **Thanks for reading. Sequel anyone? ;-) Don't hesitate to post your ideas (and/or) comments in the review!**_


	2. Affinity

9

Rating: T

Summary:

Sequel to "Nativity". Driven by an unknown impulse, Larry flew to Paris to find Ahkmenrah and settle the unsettled.

Disclaimer: Night at the Museum and its characters are courtesy of their rightful owners.

* * *

 _ **Affinity**_

… _il voulut chercher sans doute l'oubli,_

 _que seul il procure parfois,_

 _en engourdissant la mémoire lorsqu'il ne l'anéantit pas._

—Franz Liszt, _Chopin_

[…without a doubt he desired to seek forgetfulness,

which at times he alone procures,

while numbing the memory while it does not annihilate it.]

Larry sipped on his first Parisian coffee, ate his first Parisian sandwich at a modest café by Quai Voltaire. Everything seemed to him unreal, like the feeling one gets upon gazing at a faded photograph extracted from the bottom of a drawer.

" _Voulez-vous du vin, Monsieur?"_ asked the beautiful waitress.

In a flurry of real-life images which began intensifying, of terrifying speed, the faded picture disappeared altogether and her voice reached him crisply, a real human voice of a real world, addressed to a real person.

"Would you like some wine?" she asked again. He remarked that her accent was charming, a mixture of many, of a foreign, far-off land… a subtle pain punched the inner side of his chest.

" _Laissez-le tranquil, Amélie, mon dieu!"_ the patron placed two espresso cups under the machine, cleaned them with a waft of steam before filled them.

"Yes, please," Larry replied nervously. The waitress nodded with a kind, flirtatious smile.

"Excuse me," he added very soon after, "you have a beautiful accent."

"Very flattering. _Merci_."

"I knew someone…" but he stopped right away. What the hell, he thought, must be jetlag. He forced a smile, she walked away, then returned a short while later with a glass of Saint-Émilion.

"That's on me," she said. And he had always been told that Parisians are never nice to Americans… "guessing from the way you talk, that _someone_ must be a special person."

" _Laissez-le tranquil, Amélie!"_ the patron placed two plates of sandwich on the counter table, gestured a waiter to fetch them, _"il n'est même pas beau, celui-là!"_

" _Mais si!"_ she retorted. "How is that person like?"

"Very elegant," Larry said with a smile. His gaze was forlorn, lost as he observed the street outside. Who the hell runs in T-shirt in such weather…? A woman wrapped in furs walked her dog in her heels. The sky was somber, heavy. A large group of Chinese tourists filled the sidewalks, taking endless pictures of whatever object they passed.

"Enjoy your wine, then."

"Reads Latin…," he continued, as if swimming out of a dream, "plays the piano very well, too… Thalberg."

"Oh, _Thalberg_ …! They're performing him tonight at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées."

"Excuse me, where?"

"Théâtre des Champs-Elysées," she repeated slowly, smiled. "A short walk from here, about twenty minutes. You go all the way along the Seine (she gestured in the direction of Musée d'Orsay) until you reach Pont de l'Alma—you can see the Eiffel clearly from there—keep walking until you can turn right to Avenue Montaigne," she said everything with some kind of faith that Larry could actually grasp her completely, "or walk to the Louvre and take the metro 1… no, better the metro 7 to La Courneuve, always from Louvre, go down at Chaussée d'Antin, take the 9 until Alma-Marceau…"

Larry jotted down everything feverishly. Here and there, she corrected and added some missing names.

"I'd walk if I were you," she added, "I hate recommending Parisian metro to tourists—don't laugh. I mean it. The Théâtre is in front of Hôtel Montaigne: you'll find it very easily."

"Thank you."

"What's your special person doing in Paris?"

"A PhD student at the Sorbonne."

"Oh, _dis-donc_!"

It was as if Larry could already see fragments of scenes in his head of him greeting Ahkmenrah, just like the good old days… What good old days? He's probably forgotten about me, what the hell… He finished his coffee. I don't give a damn. The thoughts replayed infinitely in his head. Must be the jetlag. He took a sip of the wine. Never in his life had he tasted something that good. Why the hell am I in Paris in the first place?...

He thought of everything that had happened so fast. The last incomplete assignment. The dropout. The boring job at the post office, everything was the same every day, until one day… he had decided that he could not live like that anymore: an automate, a robot… He went home and listened to Thalberg. That, and some Bob Dylan. Absentmindedly, he had typed a name, as if it was dictated to him by some unknown force… "Memories and Ruminations in Thalberg's _Les Soirées de Pausilippe_ " signed by a familiar name…

* * *

It was raining hard. The metro 7 had "slight technical problems" that he had to descend at the Opéra and spent some ten minutes dodging the downpour trying to reach the Chausée d'Antin subway. Twenty minutes to the concert, under a sudden panic attack, he almost took the wrong direction of metro 9. He arrived five minutes before eight, to the sound of the bell signaling the beginning of the concert, directly ran towards the cashier.

The elegant young man behind the counter threw him a depreciative look. Larry realized that he had on a soaked cheap old coat and a crumpled shirt.

"It's really Thalberg tonight, right?" he asked anyway, panting like an old dog.

The elegant young man's expression opened up all of a sudden.

"Yes," he said, beaming, "the Grande Sonate and the piano concerto (followed by two Russian names unknown to him, apparently of a famous pianist and a conductor who was recently bestowed the Légion d'Honneur)."

Was _he_ here earlier? Did the man tell him the two unknown names?... Larry took a crumpled twenty-euro bill from his wallet and handed it to the man. A strange feeling of detachment washed over him, and for a while he felt as if he was adrift, a stranger in a world of strangers.

* * *

The concert hall. Larry was sat at the highest balcony, from where the musicians looked like small dots. The seats around him were empty. He placed the soaked coat on the seat next to him. Many images, voices returned to him as concrete blocks when the familiar passage of the piano concerto hit his ears. Even after years, he could only describe it as "beautiful"… But he soon snapped to reality and judged himself as "ridiculous" for holding on to the memories. If anything, it was forgetfulness, seen otherwise, but forgetfulness… like everything that had ceased all of a sudden, the words, the exchange of smiles, and then… forgetfulness. He thought of these and the music altogether, until both melted into one another.

Outside, among the crowds leaving, Larry finally noticed a familiar figure. The slim figure looked almost sickly with slightly slouched shoulders, and the all-black clothing had cast on it an unlikely sadness, but it was indeed _him_. There was something ridiculous about him trying to light his cigarette using an expensive-looking lighter that itself refused to ignite. Larry watched him intently while thinking of the new student in front of the class, elegant and distant, although now it was the latter more than the former. And the new student had pronounced his name, in a strange accent of a far-off land…

" _Ahkmenrah Hasani,"_ Larry said it, his voice overlapping with the one in his memory.

Ahkmenrah shoved the cigarette and the lighter to his coat pocket, turned to Larry and smile. Larry could tell from the look in Ahkmenrah's eyes that he was gazing at a faded photograph extracted from the bottom of a drawer.

"Daley?"

He extended a hand in a refined gesture, which Larry shook hesitantly.

"Here, out of all places! The world is such a small place indeed."

Now that Ahkmenrah talked, Larry remarked that even his voice had taken the same sadness, as his figure.

"How long has it been?" Ahkmenrah asked in an unusually joyful tone, but all Larry could see was his sunken eyes. They were like that back then, too, but now they were more human, matured, the look of someone who had finally understood life.

"Too long…" Larry blurted. "I mean, years pass by, like that, you know. It's scary," he added shortly after having realized that he sounded somehow melancholy.

Ahkmenrah: "Yes… too fast."

A BMW parked nearby. Ahkmenrah excused himself for a while then ran to it. Larry watched the short exchange between him and the driver, who nodded before finally drove off.

Larry: "I mean… you must have things to do, a lot of things. I don't want to…"

"It's Friday," Ahkmenrah replied with a smile. He had tried making it sound as light as possible, but it struck himself and Larry as awkward, fake. Then, to neutralize the situation: "So, what brings you here, Larry?"

"Thalberg… I guess."

A short pause.

"Can't say that I was the one who influenced you…"

"You can say that."

"You have listened to his other works, I imagine?"

"Les… sorry, I can't bring myself to pronounce it."

" _Les soirées de Pausilippe,"_ Ahkmenrah beamed, "great choice. My father used to play it every morning… At first I thought there was nothing special to it, but I got something new each time I listened to it."

"Honestly, I can't say much about it. I just listen to it after work, you know, to wind out… I have no exact idea, nothing, those are just… beautiful. Sorry to disappoint you."

"Not at all… If anything, you have understood Thalberg better than you think you do."

Now that they had been talking for some time, Larry realized that there was something off about Ahkmenrah, something had changed, as if a lever inside him had been pulled, such that the real person behind the Ahkmenrah who was talking to him had since long disappeared. His severe elegance struck Larry as painful and clung to his skin like summer air.

"Walk with me, Larry."

* * *

They walked along the Seine. The rain had cleared the sky such that there was no cloud left on it. The pale moon in the distant cast on the dark blue sky a greenish shade, but its light meant nothing to the Eiffel towering in the distance, its light reflected on the Seine among many others.

For some time, Larry thought of a thing to say, to ask… but somehow the words would not pass his mouth because he had judged them as ridiculous or useless. Ahkmenrah, as of him, was mostly silent. From time to time, he would ask questions asked to syncopate the silence, to circumnavigate the personal points, to carefully avoid them.

"Do you like it here?"

A pause.

"I'm getting used to…" Ahkmenrah's voice was low, almost lost under the humming of the cars passing by.

"No, not that," Larry retorted. He realized that everything about this meeting with Ahkmenrah had tired him: the distance, the fake cordiality, the confusions… He decided that to finish with the bullshit and get to the point, "the question is 'do you like it here or not?', do you like it here better than Sofia or Cairo or New York or God knows whatever else is on the list."

Ahkmenrah frowned. Of course, the reaction was to him disagreeable, although he was, strangely, somehow, pleased.

"Yes, Larry," he replied calmly, "of all cities, I pass the longest time in Paris. We come back here often, too, because my father is, after all, a research director at the Sorbonne. Everything is sort of starting and finishing here, so yes, I can say that I like it here enough to consider such fact."

Larry, after some time, with a smile: "You're always like that, aren't you?

"Always talking around things so that they won't get to you, always avoiding everything too close to you. But sometimes, you know, _sometimes_ … people do mean you. When I asked if you like it here, it's about you, when I said you played the piano very well, it's about you. Simple as that."

There was a long pause. That's it, Larry thought, it's over. And he could not even justify his anger, disgust, impulse. He was like a child not given his toy.

"What do you expect me to say, Lawrence? …There is never a singular affirmation on everything. Like when you ask if I like it here, saying a simple 'yes' would be useless, don't you think, because I know it's not exactly that way and not exactly the contrary either. What I feel about Paris goes beyond like or dislike. Now, had I said something like that, you would probably think that I'm being dishonest as well… Nativity, belonging, those are difficult subjects…

" _The very notion of homeland, in the noble and sentimental sense of that word, is linked to the relative briefness of our life that procures us too little time so as to we could attach ourselves to another country, to other countries, to other languages_ , in the words of Milan Kundera."

Larry fell silent. In the past, he would dismiss such statement as pretentious. He would even laugh at the person saying it.

"But have you ever attached yourself to something? If not a country, a person, you know, something, even a memory. _Something_. Like you see something and think: hey, this makes me feel so belong, this defines me, something like that… The music, for example, you seem to like it very much… well, of course, it goes beyond 'like', I'm just simplifying, but you get what I'm trying to say—"

Ahkmenrah chuckled.

"We can never attach ourselves to music (unless at the price of giving ourselves away, of course). It's vowed to forgetfulness, to silence (pause)… but now that you ask it, yes, I have felt it…"

"Well, since you must think of homeland as 'mission impossible' (both chuckled) I assume that it must be a person," Larry paused. He swallowed nervously. Why the hell was he asking all these, what would it bring him…? But it was too late.

They stopped walking. Facing them was Pont Alexandre -III and the daunting façade of Invalides. Ahkmenrah stopped walking, leaned his back against the railing, gazed at the sky, then looked back to Larry, who was still astounded by the view.

Ahkmenrah : "Impressive, isn't it? When I was younger, I wanted to write a symphony of Paris because of this."

"Well, you can very well do it," Larry replied without taking his gaze off Invalides, but forced it back to Ahkmenrah, "I read your article, about the memories of Thalberg… I'm sure there's a musician in there somewhere," he was amazed at how serious he actually sounded, "it must lack credibility said by someone like me, but what the hell… you can always write it."

"I'm surprised that someone actually read it… I mean outside the researchers' circle," Ahkmenrah's face lit up in an honest expression of joy. "I was even surprised when they contacted me to publish it. To be honest it was nothing special: something one would write in a café and that's all about it."

"You won't trust me… but it was nicely written…, at least for me it was _that_ good. There's even some kind of modesty in there, which must be uncommon for… (Larry paused, wondered if he should actually say it) people of your sort."

He then looked back at the Invalides, the white-and-gold sculptures of the bridge, the elaborate street lights, the lights reflected on the Seine. They had always been different. He thought of Metropolis again, of the two separate worlds, of some people born to be under the light while some others… not so much.

"You're right, Larry… the… _affinity_ …I felt was for a person…"

Larry turned to look at Ahkmenrah, wondering whether what he had just heard was real, or some kind of illusion created by overlapping sounds of cars passing by, of countless other voices which to him, at the moment, struck him as equally equivocal.

"It was too brief… but it was an affinity nonetheless, almost affection, but I'm not in the right to talk about it, I had no clear idea of it myself… now that I think of it, it was quite strange, I couldn't quite get a right term for it, something that quite depicts it… something… exact."

"It doesn't exist."

"What?"

"The exact term, the exact anything, the _exactitude_ in particular… it doesn't exist."

"You're right, it doesn't," Ahkmenrah smiled, "precision does, but not exactitude—he discreetly looked at his watch—I have to go back now. My flight to Warsaw's tomorrow morning at nine-fifteen."

"So that's it, I guess."

"It was a pleasure meeting you," Ahkmenrah snapped back to his usual cordiality, which now struck himself like an irony, "and to know that someone actually shares an appreciation for Thalberg…" he added as to lessen it. _While most of them reduced him to a simple Rossinist crushed under Liszt's feet…_

"The _affinity_ (Larry said it as a citation) you felt back then… how did you know that it was actually something of that sort?"

"I still don't understand why it matters so much for you."

"Because somehow I was sure that the person was me," Larry snapped. His jaws tensed up, his eyes fiery, but he quickly calmed himself, "look, man… I felt strange, too, you know… I mean, it was… you know, alright… I'll try again."

Ahkmenrah smiled.

"I understand."

"You do? (Larry frowned) I mean with Amelia, Erica, it was something like that, an affinity, but simpler. But with you, it was more… complicated. Hell, I even had no idea of such thing, when it started. Maybe there wasn't any beginning to start with… it was just sort of… _there_. All of a sudden, everything which was familiar to me started to unravel. Same places, same people, same everything, but I felt as if I was some kind of paper man planted there randomly. Then your music, your books, hell, even your voice felt familiar to me, and for a moment I even actually thought that we could be friends, that we were not that different, you know… but what the hell. I mean, look at you, you and your kind, and me. An educated and a dropout… if anything, I must be a f… idiot. Plus, you just disappeared (he clacked his fingers) and I knew that maybe, _maybe_ , nothing was real to start with, and truth is—what?" Larry snapped when realizing that Ahkmenrah was watching him intently all the time he was talking.

"I was thinking: if you take your story and place it entirely on my plate, you would pretty much have the same dish."

"Come on now, you can't be serious!"

Ahkmenrah leaned closer towards Larry, looked at him right in the eyes. He remembered the arrogant jock from back then, the one who was laughing at him from the back of the classroom, the one who snapped a naïve "it was beautiful", while the others were always busy looking for too much adjectives, were always dissecting words… without knowing that, most of the time, the right word was never far. And he had the same weakness, same stupidity…

"Would you mind?" he asked Larry. The latter understood right away, although he did not respond.

The shorter man reached out for Larry's chin then leaned over to kiss him on the lips. Larry's lips on his were cold, rough, thin… At the contact, he slowly became aware to many senses, sounds, which he thought he had long forgotten. Then, in his musician's ear, each one of those sounds gradually came together, as if under a baton of an imaginary conductor, forming the main theme of his symphony.

 **author's note**

 _ **First of all, thank you to my kind reviewers, especially TimberTinderBox: just in case you have noticed, the outline of this sequel comes from you!**_

 _ **Now, my personal notes. I wanted to write a full-blown lemon (trust me, I really did! I even keep the draft in my notebook!) but after some considerations, I finally decided that Larry and Ahkmenrah's relationship is better interpreted and appreciated in a "noble", if not metaphysical, manner. There is a reason why they name the shipping "Soulmates", it is because the link is of a higher nature, isn't it, logically speaking? Hence the resolution.**_

 _ **Of course, if necessary, I will post the lemon scene as an appendix, because I can't see it attached to the story. I'm not saying that their relationship can never be erotic, of course it can, and honestly I love reading it as such, but writing is as such is an altogether different stories.**_

 _ **The last concluding kiss is seen as an epiphany, as the reminiscence was in the previous chapter: the two chapters are then linked by that motif, the epiphany.**_

 _ **Lastly, this fanfiction is a homage to Némirovsky's "La Symphonie de Paris", my all-time favorite short-story.**_

 _ **Thank you so much for reading, reviewing, faving.**_

 _ **Des bisous xx**_

 _ **F.V.**_


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